


A Few Cards Short of a Full Deck

by lightgetsin



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen, episode: Evidence of Things Not Seen, post-ep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-24
Updated: 2003-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightgetsin/pseuds/lightgetsin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Will's still figuring things out, Donna's freaking out about I don't know what, Toby's going to be a father, CJ's going around smiling at everybody, Leo looks about five years older than he did six months ago, and the President wants to chain his daughter up in the basement of the Residence. We're…we're all crazy."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Few Cards Short of a Full Deck

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for Evidence of Things Not Seen.

** A Few Cards Short of a Full Deck** 

NOTE: Post-ep for Evidence of Things Not Seen.

1

 

Will

Will has a plane to catch, and he's walking in the wrong direction. He's doing fine until he's about halfway to the lobby, skirting small huddles of staffers asking each other if they heard the shots and where they were and where the President was. But then his feet take an unexpected right, and he's through Communications and almost on top of Donna's desk before he quite realizes it.

It takes her a moment to notice him. All her attention is focused on her hands, on the quick, decisive flicks of her wrist as she sorts a stack of folders of Everest proportions. Her head is bent, her lip caught lightly between her teeth, and she keeps casting quick, furtive glances at Josh's closed door. She must catch him out of the corner of her eye the next time she does it, because she jumps a little and looks up.

"Do you need something?" she asks, mostly professional.

"Can I�?" Will gestures at the door.

Donna frowns. "He's on the phone," she starts, then pauses, looking at Will again. "Hold on."

She stands, crosses over, and knocks lightly on Josh's door before poking her head in. There's a brief exchange, and then she's motioning Will in and closing the door behind him. Will's been around this place long enough to take notice when people close their office doors. It's part of the code of the place, a Nevada Bravo 331 of liminality that Will has come to respect, as he has so many other things here. Including Josh.

Josh is closing a cell phone as Will enters, and even as he's looking up and right into Will's eyes there's something abstracted and away about him that unnerves Will a little. Both Toby and Leo had taken him aside after he was appointed deputy, equally gruff, saying almost identical terse phrases about bullets and scar tissue and lungs and Christmas music. There was a warning in all that, and Will likes to think it's fair notice of the consequences should he upset a delicate balance, and not a precaution against Josh himself.

"What's up?" Josh asks, dropping the cell phone onto the desk.

"I didn't mean to interrupt your call," Will says, not yet sure about the answer to Josh's question.

Josh shrugs. "I can call him back. Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I have a few minutes." They lapse into silence and Will shifts uneasily under Josh's gaze. He wants to look at Josh, to see him shot and alive to tell about it, but he feels it's some sort of trespass to look at Josh and think like that. "I wanted to tell you," he starts after a moment, "to ask you�Look, I know you were, are, pretty mad at me. For, you know, California, and Sam and everything."

"Will," Josh starts, "I know after tonight you're feeling a little�"

"Yeah," Will says. "I'm feeling a little."

"It's just," Josh says, staring over Will's shoulder at his chalkboard, "you're freaking out a little in the aftershocks, and that's fine. But there's no need to be-"

"Really," Will breaks in, "I'm not-I don't think." He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I just wanted to apologize, which is sort of silly because it's not my fault, really. It's nobody's fault, or at least nobody who sticks around for the blame after things like this happen. But I just�I'm sorry Sam made that crazy promise to me."

"He did it for the widow," Josh says almost, but not quite snapping. "Not for you. For the widow. That's just�Sam."

"Yeah," Will says. "And I'm not�I'm not him and, well, I just." He shrugs, running out of steam.

Josh sighs and seems to sink further into his chair even though he hasn't moved. "It's fine," he says wearily. "I'm not mad at you. Not anymore. And I never was, really�just a little�miffed."

Will smiles, recognizing the shortcut back to the firmer road of the conversation. "Miffed?" he says, lifting an eyebrow. "Do you have a list of synonyms for pissed off that you rotate through on a regular basis or something?"

Josh smiles back a little, his fingers creeping up to toy with the cell phone. "Toby drew one up for me years ago," he says.

Will nods, rocks back on his heels. "I should go," he says. "There's a North Korean missile meteor thing in Wyoming I need to do."

Josh blinks, opens his mouth, then closes it. Will figures that probably isn't the strangest thing Josh has heard today, and the man has to have learned when not to ask at this point. "Have fun," Josh says dryly.

"Sure." Will gives a small, abbreviated little wave, and allows himself one moment to look at Josh and think about it. He wasn't there then, wasn't with them then, and it took him until February to figure out that he would probably never be one of them because of it. But now there's breaking glass ringing in his ears, and a playing card popping out of his fingers and skidding away across the carpet and under the first row of seats, the queen of spades gazing impassively at the ceiling as CJ shakes beside him. He wonders, for a sudden, wild moment, what Josh would say if he asked to see the scar.

But then he regains his senses and knows he's been staring a beat too long, and Josh is just on the cusp of noticing. And Josh is a very smart man, and Will is terrified of Leo and Toby in equal parts, and he really, really doesn't want to go there. To drag Josh there.

Will leaves the office, then the White House. He has a plane to catch, a take-off and landing to white-knuckle through, and two sensible, insubordinate men to defend.

2

 

Donna

There are about five hundred files on Donna's desk, closed legislative bids, outdated congressional election things, old policy briefings. They're just the top armload of the ever-growing stack in the storage room down the hall, and Donna hates sorting through them. She doesn't mind filing so much-she likes fitting each neatly labeled folder into exactly the right slot in a drawer, but she's not too crazy about the sorting. Her filing system is exact and stringent, and she needs to know that everything will be just where it should be when Josh calls for it. She can think about other things while she's labeling the folders and putting them away, even while she's taking messages or dictation, but not when she's sorting the files by date, status, topic, party affiliation, and about nine other criteria. The task takes her entire and undivided attention, and that's not something she can give for long periods of time with Josh Lyman ten feet away, grumbling and stewing and making calls and doing things. The backlog of closed files was entirely eliminated before the midterm elections, and then again right before the first campaign kick-off up in Manchester. But sometime in the intervening year it's grown again. Donna likes that, is proud of that. She has come to measure the way she lives, the way Josh lives, by that pile. When it is high and in danger of toppling, things are good. When it is whittled down to just a few lonely folders, someone is dying or ill or the world is spinning off its axis.

But she's having trouble now. She's caught two mistakes already, and she's pretty sure she should stop before her entire filing system is a snarl of missing folders and empty spaces. Her eyes feel gritty and sting a little, and she can't stop checking Josh's door every fifteen seconds, even after Will enters.

She hadn't intended to let him in. She hadn't intended to let anybody in tonight, short of the President. But Will had looked oddly pleading, and she had a sudden thought that perhaps Josh needed a break from the phone call he said he wouldn't make, and well, man in uniform. Donna has always been one to embrace her weaknesses as wholeheartedly as her strengths.

And now Will is coming out, stepping a little lighter, and so deep in thought he barely notices her as she brushes right past him and into Josh's office before he can shut the door and get back on the phone. He looks utterly unsurprised to see her, which would normally irritate her. She likes disconcerting Josh, though lately that has required more and more work. She knows he's right about the high-wire routine-his version of a warning. She knows she's been too much on the side of edgy lately, and not so much funny, and she knows, she's known for years now, how things are and how they always will be. But sometimes she has trouble quashing the small, mean little voice that wonders what will happen if she finds another Republican to date, because this may not be how things are supposed to be for that small part of Donna that pretends not to believe in fairy tales, but Josh is still a possessive man, and she can take her thrills as they come nowadays.

Josh has glanced back down to his desk, to the cell phone waiting there, but he hears her as she slips into the office in Will's wake. "You heading home?" he asks.

Donna pauses, oddly unbalanced by the familiar, innocuous question. Except, from Josh, not so innocuous. She has learned, along with the many, many other things she knows about Josh Lyman, that he only asks that when he feels strongly about the subject, in either direction. Usually she can tell right away which it is-whether he wants her to stay as late as he is and pretend to need to do something in his office just to have someone breathing in the same room with him, or when he needs to talk about something or think about something that she can't know about. Or, and Donna doesn't like to think about this last option, when he simply wants the buzz of her presence gone, needs not to hear her shifting around her desk and humming softly as she works. Right now, Donna has no idea what Josh is saying to her. He rarely says things outright when it's about him. He's never told her when he needed her to go, when he needed her to stay, just like he's never told her how things stand with them. But she can figure it out on her own. "How are you doing?" she asks.

"Fine." There's a slight irritated note, a tiny eye roll.

"Did you hear about the guy?" she asks then.

"Yeah, Ron Butterfield told me." He shrugs. "He'll spend the rest of his life in an institution."

Donna bites her lip again. She's beginning to suspect that Josh very badly wants her to be gone. Most days reading him like this, knowing him like this, it's just part of the package, of the good assistant, the fantastic assistant she has made of herself. Most days she files and she types and she takes and makes calls, and she loves what she does and is proud of it. But some days there is this buzzing inside her, and the high-wires in her head vibrate like electrical lines, and she'll spend half the day sure that everything over the past four years has been entirely in her head, just wishful thinking from the young, impressionable assistant. And she gets a little edgey, a little angry, because there should be a symmetry in this sort of thing and there's really not.

"Well," she says, clearing her throat a little. "I'll just go, then." She pauses, not quite hoping for him to ask her to stay. He only nods. "See you on Monday, then," she says, turning quickly.

"Donna?"

She pauses in the doorway, allowing only a quick glance back. Josh is still looking at her, though his fingers are toying restlessly with the cell phone. "Yeah?"

"I've been meaning to tell you, you did a good job with the maintenance thing for Air force One. Real good. I appreciate it."

She blinks, sighs. "Sure, Josh. Good night."

"Night."

She leaves and gathers her jacket and purse. She thinks about taking the remaining armload of files back to storage, but then she figures she might want them again tomorrow. Sometime, while her back was turned, Josh closed his door again. She's sure he's on the phone again, and just for one second she allows herself to think that he's probably not talking to Dr. Keyworth.

But then she unknows that with the neat precision of long practice and heads for the lobby. She's a good assistant, a fantastic assistant, and she's made this of herself, for herself. But she's not a perfect assistant, nor, she thinks a little sadly, a perfect friend, and she can't, she won't, know everything about Josh. Then again, she thinks, surveying the trappings of the White House lobby, maybe that means she is a great friend after all.

3

 

Toby

Toby is having trouble packing his briefcase for the weekend, which has been happening to him a lot on recent Fridays. He's got drafts of four different speeches the President will be delivering over the next few weeks spread out on his desk, and he's trying to decide which two he should take. Four is definitely too many, and even three is pushing it. Toby isn't too sure how one less weekend draft will make him a better father, but at this point he's simply resigned himself to the fact that Andi is pretty much writing the dictionary on all of this, and he's just along to nod and smile and ask her to marry him. And, more recently, put her shoes on for her because bending over has become a distant memory.

Toby sighs, finally settling on the Women in Sports dinner and the Shenandoah Park Service walking disaster. He's desperately hoping he can send Will along on that one in his place. Will has probably climbed half the mountains in the United States and Europe, he'd like that sort of thing.

Coat over one arm, briefcase on the other, Toby exits his office. The bullpen is deserted, which is not surprising considering it's a Friday, and everybody probably ran like hell when they could for fear the lock-down would be re-imposed. Donna comes from Operations, so absorbed in her thoughts that she doesn't notice him as she passes. If he cared about that sort of thing at all, Toby would wonder what has been wrong with her for several weeks now. But he doesn't need or want to know, and the saga of Josh and Donna, really the saga of Donna when it comes right down to it, has ceased to hold even the mild interest it initially sparked.

Toby pauses, glancing back the way Donna came. The building is silent in that direction, but Toby's pretty sure there's at least one other person still around. He's caught only a glimpse of Josh since the window shattered over their heads, and he has a sudden, strange urge to stop by his office and say goodnight. He almost dismisses it because he really doesn't do that sort of thing, but this isn't about Josh so much, anyway.

Josh's door is closed when he arrives, but the light is on. Toby knocks, then enters without waiting. He's almost expecting to hear a grunt from behind the door, to see Josh standing back there, doing�something with a wall and his head, or maybe that's supposed to be his center. But Josh is behind his desk, glancing up in obvious irritation and telling somebody on a cell phone that he'll call them back.

"Is there a line out there?" Josh asks, craning his neck to peer behind Toby. "Or do you just have one person hanging around to tell you when it's your turn?"

"There's no one else around," Toby says, rolling his eyes.

"Ah." Josh sits back in his chair. "So it's just random chance that has everyone dropping in on me in a neat, orderly fashion. Lucky me."

"I, uh-" Toby clears his throat uneasily. Andi has been reading a lot of books about child rearing, a lot of stuff about learning and behavior management. According to the books, it takes different children different lengths of time to learn different things, which Toby could have told Andi before. But they also say that some things are like the second half of an instinct, that they can be learned and learned forever after just one lesson. The book talks about food aversions, how if a child is violently ill after consuming a specific food only once, they will retain a lifelong aversion to the food, like the scent and flavor and texture are permanently written in their mouths and brains. Toby can believe this, because he had a second helping of hot lead and shattering glass tonight, and his very first thought after the last shot rang out was Josh, where's Josh gotta find Josh.

So maybe he wouldn't be surprised to see a line out there, because it's crazy like getting struck by lightning twice, crazy like a man nearly twenty feet behind the intended target, a man in the shadow of the building, a single small pocket of fragile flesh in front of thousands of square feet of stone happening to be in exactly the wrong spot in exactly the wrong second. Except, according to the doctors, he was also just in the right spot not to have his heart shredded into tiny, useless pieces, or his spine snap with the impact.

"Toby?" Josh is frowning up at him, looking like he's about to stand up and come around the desk and do something irritating like take Toby's arm and usher him to a chair.

"Andi and I are going to Maryland this weekend," Toby says hastily.

Josh sits back. "Yeah? How's that going?"

Toby shrugs. "Well, we haven't talked about living arrangements or work yet, and she's the size of a small wale, and we haven't decided on names, and she hasn't agreed to marry me - but she's stopped laughing when I ask."

"So, about as you were expecting?"

"Yeah."

"Have you talked about religion?" Josh asks. "I mean, do you want to raise them Jewish?"

"Yes," Toby says. "That�that I won't compromise on. They can be Beatrice and Bluto or Ham and Eggs for all I care as long as they know�" he trails off, shrugging. He wants his children to know that there's an order to the universe, an ancient script to things that they can live their lives by and turn to when things spin out of control. But he's not sure how to say this to Josh.

Josh nods, and the part of Toby that does worry about these things, the part that never asked Josh to come to Synagogue with him again after the first rebuff, whispers something cruel about reforming the reformers and praying only on holidays. But Toby hates hypocrites, and he promised long ago never to preach and practice in different directions when it comes to religious tolerance, or anything else. It's only a quarter of the battle though, he has thought more than once. He just thinks these things and doesn't say them-when his kids can grow up in a world where thinking them isn't even an option, he'll be happy.

"Toby, you're not going to�" Josh pauses, waving a vague hand in the air. Toby lifts an eyebrow, confused. "People told me what happened after�after Rosslyn. While I was still in the hospital, and later at home. And the few times I saw you�Toby, you're not going to try and get those ankle tracking devices on every crazy person in this country, are you?"

Toby smiles, looking away a little embarrassedly. "Only the ones with guns," he says.

Josh laughs a little. "Good. Because, you know, I imagine those things chafe, and they wouldn't go with my suit, anyway."

"Josh-"

"Or yours, either."

Toby pauses and studies the little twitch of smile at the corners of Josh's mouth. It takes him a moment to decide that Josh is really amused, and not faking it to put him off the conversation. "Yeah, not the fashion accessory of choice for government employees," he says. "Anyway, I should head home."

"Have fun this weekend," Josh says, his attention already slipping away from Toby. "And good luck with that thing with the wife and kids, and all."

"Yeah." Toby backs out of the room as Josh reaches for his cell phone. Toby wonders suddenly if Josh has ever wanted children, what kind of father he would make. But really, there's only so much room in his head right about now, and the only father he has space to worry about is himself.

He heads out, not even tempted to stop back in his office and snag one more file. He spots CJ at a distance, coming his way, but she's got a look on her face like she wants to share something, and Toby has no desire to hear anymore laws of the universe groaning under the weight of misconception tonight. He quickens his pace and makes it to the lobby before CJ can hail him. Toby is an honest man, and like everything else he likes it best when the honesty is inward as well as outward. He feels better now, he thinks as he exits the building. None of them were hurt, unless he counts CJ's brain, and barely three hours after someone shot at them again, he's heading home.

Toby is also honest enough to know that he has no qualms about milking this for all it's worth when it comes to Andi. Pregnant women are emotional, after all, and he'll have no trouble looking himself in the face while he's shaving tomorrow if he uses this fact to his advantage. Maybe they can talk about names, really talk about names, and some of the thousands of other things they've been dancing around for six months now. And maybe they can talk about religion, too, though Toby's pretty sure Andi has already guessed where he stands on that. He wants his kids to believe.

4

 

CJ

CJ doesn't really want to leave the egg to go get somebody. She knows Leo and the President are still down the hall, doing something or other with Russia that she hopefully won't be telling the press about, but she somehow thinks that if she leaves the room and comes back, the egg will be rocking innocently on its side, and she'll be mocked until the next midterms. She doesn't even want to raise her voice too much for fear of upsetting some delicate, unseen, hair thin balance.

But then again, she doesn't want to see it fall, either.

Slowly, trying not to disturb the very molecules of the air, CJ withdraws her hands. She straightens and studies the egg for a moment longer, then slowly backs away. She likes to think of it sitting there all night, or until the force of the earth spinning on its axis carries them out of the special, once a year place they're in right now. But CJ doesn't want to see it fall over, so she slowly backs out of the room, not really believing that the egg is still sitting there, balanced like a top, even as she walks away from it. She can hear the quiet murmur of the few people left in the building, and a strange bubble of something remarkably like joy explodes in CJ's chest.

She turns away from the door and starts off down the hall, feeling a soft, but undoubtedly goofy smile, curving her lips. She sees Toby up ahead on his way out, and she wants to call to him, to tell him what she's seen and let him make fun of her for a few minutes. But Toby takes one look at her and about doubles his speed, a look of near terror on his face. CJ doesn't mind. If worse comes to worse she can track the President down before he goes to bed and let him lecture her about gravitational fields and why the Antipode works the way it does. She just has an urge to share this moment, this feeling she has found within herself, and without, watching that egg balance.

She lets Toby escape, and makes her way through Communications into Operations. The bullpens and offices are all deserted, and she's just deciding to turn around and head in the opposite direction when she spots Josh's light. His door is closed, but CJ doesn't bother with that any more than she usually does. She bursts in with a triumphant, "it worked!"

Josh looks up from his desk, appearing utterly unsurprised. "I'll call you back�again," he says into his cell phone, then snaps it shut before lifting his eyes to survey CJ. "What now?"

"The egg." She's filled with a strange mix of energies, partly vibrant and jumpy and twitchy, partly deeply quiet, almost reverent. It makes for a strange feeling, and CJ shifts rhythmically from foot to foot. "I made the egg balance on its end after everybody left."

Josh lifts an eyebrow. "Really now? After everybody left?"

She glares as best she can while smiling. "I saw it, Joshua, I swear to you."

He lifts both hands. "I believe you, I believe you," he says, and though CJ suspects he's only saying that to save himself from a good badgering, she doesn't really care.

"It's a good night," she says, letting the smile come out in force. It's not until the words have left her mouth that she remembers that for Josh, and by all rights for her as well, this sort of night can never be good.

Josh sits back and studies her, and CJ is relieved to see that, though he is certainly not happy, he's not about to implode either. That was the really scary thing about that Christmas two years ago, she thinks, watching Josh watch her. Not that Josh was at high simmer and in danger of exploding like a pot left too long over the flame, but that the real force of the damage would be directed inward, and that missile he might never recover from. Her elation dampens a little at the recollection, and CJ wonders what a psychologist would say about her current state of mind. A shock reaction, probably.

"You think?" Josh says, cocking his head to the side. "You think this is a good night?"

"Yeah," CJ says, though it's a bit more of a question now. "The-the egg balanced."

Josh smiles then, and though it's only a one or two on the dimple scale, CJ can be happy with it. "If that's what it takes to make you happy, CJ, more power to you."

"Okay, now you're just mocking me." She allows a pout, and Josh's smile widens.

"Well, see, I have a question," Josh says, sitting up straight. "Eggs, they're not all, you know, perfect�they're not spheres�"

"Ovoids?" CJ suggests helpfully.

"Sure. Ovoids. They're not all perfect ovoids, whatever the hell those are, anyway. And they're not at all alike. I've seen some downright lumpy eggs, and that's before they've been cracked. So my question is, doesn't it depend on the egg you're using?"

CJ considers this. "I suppose," she says. "But I'm thinking that this is one of those things that can't be over-analyzed. That it just works when you're not expecting it to, and it's just a sort of�random confluence of events."

"So you're saying that you just happened to have the right egg?" Josh asks, then rolls his eyes. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation."

CJ sends the eye roll right back at him. "Well, the egg balanced, and even if no one else was there to see it, I was, and that's all I'm concerned about right now."

"Uhkay."

"Really," she continues, "I feel�privileged."

"You do that."

She returns her gaze to him and glares with her whole face this time. "You're just out to ruin my good mood, aren't you?"

His eyes go suddenly serious, and the shadows of dimples in his cheeks disappear. "No," he says softly. "I wouldn't do that. Not tonight. It's nice to see�to know�that someone is feeling like it's all put together right now."

"Josh-"

"I'm fine." He waves a dismissive hand. "I'm not-you don't need to be-just enjoy your mood, okay?"

She nods slowly. "I will."

"You headed home?"

"Yeah." She hesitates, glancing at his phone. "You?"

"In a little while. Good night, Claudia Jean."

"Night Joshua."

She sails out of his office and into her own to collect her things. The quietness seems to have overcome her initial burst of energy, and it doesn't occur to CJ that she is feeling peaceful until she reaches the security checkpoint and bids the agents a good night.

It's been almost a year since Simon, since she felt like a woman and a person all at the same time. There was something wrong with the world that night, she thinks as she crosses the lobby. There had been something wrong with the world that whole year, really, something unbalanced and just on the edge of toppling. For a while it had been Josh, and then the President and re-election, and so many other people in between before it was CJ's turn.

There was something wrong with the world that night, and she knows there's certainly things wrong with it tonight. But she saw it happen for a moment, she saw it stand and hold miraculously steady, and CJ decides that maybe shock is only a little part of what she's feeling.

5

 

Leo

The sandwich fixings are still there, thank God, and Leo spends a few minutes trying to figure out how he can get a few million dollars for White House Staff food orders into next year's budget because, really, if he had this to eat all the time, there'd be a lot more governing getting done. The room is deserted aside from a lone egg lying on its side on the table, and Leo wonders if he should take the President a sandwich. He'd said he was heading to bed, but Leo knows that restless look all too well, and there's no one waiting in the residence to help settle Jed down after this roller coaster of a night.

But there's someone else Leo wants to check on first, and he has little doubt that Josh is still hanging around. It's rather handy, this tendency of Josh's to stick to his office when he's upset or worried. Sandwich in hand, Leo heads out to check on his deputy.

Almost everybody is gone, aside from security and the beginnings of the cleaning staff. Leo exchanges nods with people he knows, idly trying to connect names with faces, but not working too hard at it. Sometimes Leo likes to think of himself as a part of a funnel, the narrowest bit at the very end right before things open up again onto the enormous stage of the President and the entire world. It's his job to sort the monumental flow of information and crises, to send along the essential and handle everything else. In that perspective, he discovered early on in his position as Chief of Staff that knowing people's names became entirely optional below a certain level.

Leo smiles, a swell of satisfaction rising in him. There's a story he's heard several times about White House organization, and the lesson within it is one Leo feels he has not only learned, but mastered. The explosion of the President's staff in the wake of Eisenhower, and the coming decades of executive expansion left a wild legacy in the seventies-several thousand people working directly in the White House, and the whole world still expecting the President to be Roosevelt and Johnson combined, to have his finger in every pie, to know everything that happened in and out of the building, to be the center of all activity. Ford's administration had made the mistake of a collegial system under their first Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and the story of the gag gift Rumsfeld received, a many-spoked wheel with a hub labeled the President, scrawled with dire warnings about the collegial system, has survived to this day.

But that's not what amuses and pleases Leo. He's more taken with Carter, the wheel and warnings left on the incoming Chief of Staff's desk, imprecations to use a hierarchical system or fall into chaos completely ignored by the new administration. Leo likes to think that he's found a happy medium between the two, both protecting the President from the overwhelming flood of everything, everywhere, and allowing the select few access and space to disagree on an equal footing. It's a balance that has wavered more than once, but recently Leo feels it's been functioning just as it ought-to support and protect the President.

He's proud of that, proud of these people and what they can do together and separately. When he thinks about that sort of thing Leo can't ever imagine working with anyone else, and he's already halfway to deciding that, like Jed, this will be the last job he ever holds. He would like to go out like this.

But the light on in Josh's office reminds him of the nearly four more years they have ahead of them, and Leo knows from the previous four just how much can happen in that time. He puts away the future, then, pausing a moment beside Donna's desk to clear his mind and focus in on this moment, this night.

He knocks, then enters, and Josh greets him with a sigh, a promise to return someone's call into his cell phone, and an arch, "What took you so long?"

"Plane crash in Russia, remember?" Leo says.

"Oh, that." There are no papers on Josh's desk, for once, but he studies it anyway. Shadows of another time linger in the room, palpable to those who know what to look for.

Leo sighs and digs his hands into his pockets. "How are you feeling?" he asks.

Josh glances up and then away, and Leo is glad to know that there will be no pretending not to recognize the question for what it is. "I'm fine," he says.

Leo nods. "Okay. Because if you need to we can-"

"Donna already tried," Josh says. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't even there."

Leo considers, then decides to believe him. "Okay," he says, "we'll leave it at that."

"Thanks." Josh toys uneasily with the extendable antenna on his cell phone. "Some show tonight, wasn't it?" he says after a moment. "The President, I mean."

Leo chuckles a little. "I was just thinking about that," he says. "How sometimes we work so hard to get everything right for him, and sometimes he just goes in and pulls out the stops and skips about seventy layers of complications."

"He's right you know," Josh says pensively. "Things like that�calls like that. That's what's kept the world from tearing itself apart over the past century. Not satellite pictures or proprietary technology or anything. Just�that."

Leo nods. "I haven't decided whether that's a comfort, or absolutely terrifying."

"Yeah." Josh slides down in his chair, stretching both arms over his head. "CJ, you know, she swears she got the egg to balance."

It takes Leo a moment to catch up to the reference. "Huh. Well, I guess it's no weirder than any of the other things we've seen."

Josh shrugs. "That's what I figure. The President turn in?"

"I don't think so. The First Lady's in Asia, so, you know." It occurs to Leo after a moment that Josh, having never been married, might not know, but it's not worth pursuing. "You should head home soon," he adds, his earlier concern coming back. "Get a good night's sleep. Enjoy the weekend and all."

"Leo." Josh tries on a smile, and it fits pretty well. "I'm really okay. Like I said, I wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere near the pressroom. We had to expect something like this would happen eventually, it has to more administrations than not."

Leo thinks that expectation and reality are two very different things, and he finds himself remembering Josh's face after he learned about the M.S. It's always days like those when Leo wants to make Carter's mistakes, wants to believe that bringing in more people directly to the President would be easier, better, simply because it would lessen the pressure behind his eyes.

He has a sudden, wild urge to tell Josh, to make some sort of stumbling confession of the deed. This is not a professional thing anymore this night, it is guilty and it is wondering how doing the right thing could ever be like this, and it is purely selfish.

Leo takes a deep breath, and it burns in his lungs like a really good whiskey would.

"Don't stay all night, okay?" he says, hearing the roughness in his own voice.

Josh is watching him, his head a little to the side, and Leo's half-formed suspicions that Josh already knows a lot more than he should bloom into full being. For the first time ever the deep and abiding respect Josh held for his father, and by extension Leo, is a burden, not the gift and flattery it usually is.

"Sure," Josh says finally. "You too, okay?"

"Yeah." Leo starts to go, then turns back, his yearlong unease cresting. "She said it really balanced?"

Josh glances back up from his desk. "That's what she said. You think there was something wrong with the sandwiches?"

Leo rubs his stomach. "Ain't nothing wrong with those sandwiches. It's just this night, I think."

"Yeah. Weird things happen at the equinox, when all things are supposed to balance, or whatever."

"Good night." Leo heads back through Communications, understanding Jed's mood after his conversation with Zoey much better. They made the right choice, he knows, then and now. But it rocks Leo that, at his age, he can still find the ways of the world baffling, that the way the right thing and the wrong thing can be so inextricably tangled, not lined up neatly on the opposite ends of some great cosmic scale, still surprises him.

Leo sighs, reaching up to rub his temples. He knows this way of doing things has only been around for a few decades, and the White House and the Presidency are still evolving right beneath him. They're still learning even now, how to do this better, how to do this right. But sometimes Leo can see how easy it is to make the same mistakes again, to believe that this time it will work when it never has before. They're doing their best, and sometimes their best is not enough, and Leo has begun to tally defeat and victory in his head on some great balance sheet of their lives, of the nation's life. He started this almost a year ago, with a monster of a man dead, partially at his word, and another just as dead, a victim of chance and bad luck.

Leo clenches his hands in his pockets. He needs to go make the President of the United States a sandwich.

6

 

Jed

He's inconveniencing the hell out of everybody, from himself to the agents to the maintenance people, but Jed can't find the energy to care right now, even with the look Ron is giving him. He only stayed put in the Residence for half an hour after Leo went home, or back to his hotel, depending on how you looked at it, and though the sandwich and company were good as always, here he is, wandering the halls of the West Wing at 1:30 on a Saturday morning, thinking about the White House and his little girl and Josh.

Charlie hadn't meant to tell him, he's sure, or simply hadn't known that Zoey, bright, responsible, classy Zoey, had neglected to inform her father of her summer plans. Charlie was diplomatic, of course, when Jed asked for her reasons, but he needn't have bothered. Jed has known all of this for four years. Twelve, if he's honest.

They've already swept up all the glass and replaced the window, and Jed can hardly tell the difference. He had a strange experience tonight, a self-anthropomorphizing that Stanley will have a field day with when he gets hold of it, about himself, and this building, so that damage to the edifice felt like a personal attack. It is and it isn't, he knows, and if Abby were here she'd make some crack about getting plastered and mock him until he returned to himself, his body, alone. But Abby is away, as she is so often, and tonight Jed feels like this building, enormous and unmoving, with a wide world of people dashing themselves against him with zealous fervor.

"Is everybody gone?" he asks Ron.

Ron pauses, glancing back at another agent, then listening to the ever-present earpiece. "Mr. Lyman has not signed out yet, Sir," he says after a moment.

Jed starts a little, and he has a sudden urge to return to the Residence, to forget about walking off the sleeplessness and just be still and alone. But then he's not one to give into a coward's instincts just because it's easy, so he turns towards Operations with a firm step.

Josh's light is indeed on, though the rest of the bullpen has been dimmed. Jed raps lightly, waits for the surprised acknowledgement, and then enters. Josh glances up, blinks, and starts to stand. Jed motions him down and closes the door behind him in the same gesture. Josh, as most people usually do, ignores the gesture and rises anyway. As far as Jed can tell he wasn't doing anything accept sitting at his desk and staring. There aren't even any files out to fake with.

"Mr. President," Josh says. "You're up late."

Jed lifts an eyebrow, and Josh smiles self-deprecatingly. "How are you doing?" Jed asks. He can tell from the restrained scowl that he's not the first tonight.

"Fine, thank you, Sir."

"Well, you're doing better than I am, then," Jed says. He takes a seat in Josh's visitor chair, if only to have Josh sitting down again.

"Sir?"

Jed sighs. "It seems Zoey is going to France this summer," he says. "For three months."

Josh frowns a little. "With Jean-Paul, I'm assuming?"

"Yeah."

Josh scrunches up his forehead. "I like Charlie better," he says almost petulantly. Jed isn't surprised-Zoey and Charlie's break-up was taken almost personally by a lot of people, and Josh and Zoey have always been fond of each other.

"Me, too," Jed says. "Say, do you think we could manufacture some sort of international incident with France that would reasonably allow me to ban him from the country?"

Josh considers. "Well, you could tell him to shove a baguette up his ass to his face and not to his country at large," he suggests.

Jed ponders. "Hmm. That's why I like you. You're inventive."

Josh flushes a little. It has always both pleased and unsettled Jed that a small word from him can have such an effect on these people. He shies away from the memory of screaming at Josh a year ago, of the frustration and guilt he flung outward when he should not have, of the three months it took Josh to meet his eye again for any length of time.

But the thought has come and lodged, and he's suddenly thinking of the time Josh screamed at him, with Sam and Leo's white faces behind him and a look in Josh's eyes that made Jed wonder, for a moment, if Josh wouldn't pluck the ornate letter opener right off the edge of his desk and turn the blade on himself. "Suicide by cop," Ron had said, and a painful clench seizes Jed as he wonders if maybe "suicide by President" wouldn't be more accurate in some cases. He wonders why people must throw themselves at him, like snakes battering their heads against the glass walls of their prisons, hoping that someone will put them out of their misery.

"Sir?" Josh is leaning forward, concerned. "Are you alright?"

Jed shakes himself, swallowing down the wild urge to tell Josh that he better not ever do that again, that he better never try to bounce himself off the high-voltage wire that has become Josiah Bartlet, the President of the United States' life. "I'm fine," he says instead. "Just tired. And, well, Zoey. I'll miss her."

"Me, too," Josh says softly, almost compassionately.

Jed stands quickly. "You should go home," he says. "It's already Saturday."

"I will," Josh says. "Just have a phone call to return, first."

Jed nods and turns to leave.

"Sir?" Josh is standing again when he turns back. "Zoey�she'll be okay. She knows how to take care of herself."

"Yeah." Jed nods and leaves.

The problem is, he thinks as he heads back to the Residence, that Josh is right. Zoey is a smart girl, and she knows what's best for her. The fact that what she needs right now is to be far away from him and everything he stands for hurts like getting shot didn't.

He's too many people, he thinks as they step outside and cross to the Residence. He's this man, this father, this leader, this building. They pull at him, all of them, and some days they all have clamorous voices, and sometimes, when he needs them most, they're silent and still. He'll never learn to do this just right, he thinks, to be just the right man to lead a country like this, no matter how many years he has.

He has a sudden urge to call up Liz, to ask her to wake Annie for him, to hear that young voice in his ear, to ask her to tell him what she's figuring out about the world as she's blooming like a spring blossom. She's just beginning, and she's not sure yet, and he wonders what she would say if he told her that he's four times her age and he still doesn't know.

7

 

Josh

He waits until he can't hear the President's footsteps anymore. He'd lost track of time sitting there since Leo left, and it gave him a jolt to catch sight of the clock when he was speaking to the President just now. He thinks a lapse like that should worry him, should remind him of another time when an entire week could go by and suddenly it's Saturday, not Monday, and the last thing he remembers is rolling over and hitting his alarm clock after a blur of a weekend.

Josh reaches for his cell phone a bit guiltily, realizing that he's been keeping him waiting. Or worse, he thinks as he hits the speed dial number and listens to the long string of digits reeling off, he's gotten tired of waiting and gone off to do something more interesting.

"Hey."

"Hi." Josh settles back in his chair, relieved. "Sorry to make you wait. Leo was here, and the President, too."

"It's okay." Sam sounds amused, a little wistful. "That's the whole crew, then? No one else left to stop by?"

"Not unless the maintenance crew have taken a sudden interest in me," Josh says, relaxing. "No more interruptions."

"Good."

They both pause, which is funny since they've been attempting to have a conversation all night, and now that they're assured of the time and privacy the line stretches between them, empty and a little uneasy.

"So�are you okay?" Sam asks finally. He's already asked this, they were the first words out of his mouth the second Josh answered the first call nearly four hours ago, only moments after Sam turned on CNN and heard the words "gunshots" and "White House." Josh is pretty sure Sam would be on a red-eye right now if he had sounded an iota less certain when he had answered. But apparently Sam needs to hear it again, and that's okay with Josh.

"I'm fine," he says soothingly.

"You sure?"

Josh pauses to make sure, because this is Sam and there are flights leaving from LAX every half hour or so, and as much as Josh hates them being on opposite sides of the country he doesn't want Sam to come back like that. And Sam deserves honesty from him. But he's really fine, and not in the "I'm fine" way, but in the way various therapists have taught him to push the pause button on himself and run a quick self-diagnostic. No tremors. No racing pulse. No unexplained sounds or sights. No headache, no irritability, no temporal displacement. No quiet but persistent urge to go into his bathroom and swallow down the half bottle of prescription painkillers left over from his recovery. Tonight he's tired, he's a little shaken, he's a little frayed.

"Really. I promise."

"Okay."

Sam believes him, Josh can tell.

"What about you?" Josh asks. "How are things?"

"Okay," Sam says.

"Really?" Josh asks, out of a perverse need for symmetry.

"Really."

They lapse into silence and Josh swivels a little uneasily in his chair, almost hoping that one of the maintenance people will come by.

"Have you decided-"

"How is everybody-"

They speak simultaneously, stop at the same moment, and laugh uneasily.

"You first," Josh says, because he's suddenly not so sure if he wants to hear Sam's answer to his question.

"How is everybody else?" Sam asks. He, too, sounds a bit relieved. "I've gotten some emails from CJ and a few notes from Charlie, but that's all about the funny stuff you do."

"Nice to know I'm good for something," Josh says with little rancor. "Everybody's� well. Will's still figuring things out, Donna's freaking out about I don't know what, Toby's going to be a father, CJ's going around smiling at everybody, Leo looks about five years older than he did six months ago, and the President wants to chain his daughter up in the basement of the Residence. We're�we're all crazy."

"But�is it the normal crazy, or a crazy crazy?" Sam asks, not unreasonably.

"It's been crazy crazy all along," Josh says softly. "Sam, I swear some days�what are we doing? We have four more years to change this country, to make things better, and sometimes we get so lost in that we forget entirely about it and suddenly it's about Russia and terrorists and just keeping our heads above the water. Sometimes I wonder how we're ever going to�what we expect to�" he lapses into silence and presses his head back into his chair. "Have you made up your mind, yet?" he asks through numb lips. "Do you want to come back? You know Leo would rehire you in a heartbeat."

There's a sigh somewhere in California, and Josh feels it to his bones. "Josh�I really don't know. I thought�I mean, I knew I wasn't going to win. There was no way. The first election victory was a fluke-because he was dead and Will knew just how to play it. And I knew that, I really did."

"But you still thought maybe," Josh says, nodding. He'd known that, been afraid of that, from the moment he heard about that ridiculous promise. And he can see how Sam could feel like that, could know all the logic and the polling and the politics, but could still believe, deeply and secretly, that he would win because it was about time someone else did and because it would just be right.

"Yeah," Sam says softly. "I thought maybe, and I just�all that you just said and everything else. I know I'm a little old for this, but I just can't believe there's not some order to things."

"CJ seems to think there is, at least tonight," Josh says quietly. "Toby, too, a little, but in a different way. But he's going to be a dad, and I'm told that does wacky things to a person."

"Did you ever feel like that?" Sam asks. "Like things were moving around you and there was something going on that you couldn't see?"

"Yeah," says Josh, thinking of Sam looking up at him through a conference room window, about his eyes going wide and his decision made in just a glance. "I've felt like that sometimes," he says softly.

"Before I left I didn't," Sam says. "And I hadn't for a while. And I�I've always depended on that, you know? But for a long time it's like we've been teetering over precipice after precipice, and all we do is try to stay standing. And I don't want to think that wanting the world to have a sort of magic to it is naive-"

"It's not," Josh says.

"--But I also don't want to fool myself," Sam finishes. "I don't know what I'm going to do, and I hope you know my decision isn't about the job, or the staff, or anything like that. It's about this other stuff, which is pretty stupid, really, to be basing a career decision on, but�"

"It's not stupid," Josh says, thinking of his one moment of faith, so desperately longed for even though he hadn't known what he was missing, of Leo as a strange messenger from somewhere else, come to tell him how things were supposed to be. "I understand," he says softly. "I really do. Some of us are sure that we're doing okay, that the world is okay, and some of us really aren't. And it seems to change day to day."

"I should let you go," Sam says. "I forget there's a time difference between us, now."

"It's fine," Josh says. "Really. Not like I'm not up this late on a regular basis, anyway."

"Still. You should get home."

His eyes are beginning to ache a little with the strain of remaining open, and Josh knows Sam is right. "Okay. But you'll call me if you want to talk about it? About anything?"

"Of course."

Josh heaves a sigh, preparing to stand. "Good night, then."

Sam returns it and Josh hits "end" for the last time this night. He studies the phone for a moment, then slips it in his pants pocket and pushes himself up by the arms of the chair. Jacket, then backpack, one quick look around the office to make sure he's not leaving anything he'll need over the weekend. It's all mechanical, though, and really Josh isn't even thinking about anything, just floating along. He likes the White House in the small hours of the morning, when there's no crisis that is, and he takes his time on the way out.

A warm tide of air embraces him as he steps outside, the first lappings of a blistering summer. Josh glances up at the stars as he heads for the parking lot, what little of them can be seen in D.C. He thinks how strange it is that he can't watch them moving, even though the earth is spinning incredibly fast, and how, if it weren't for gravity, the force of that spin would fling them all off like tiddlywinks. He wonders when, if, Sam will call.

But then he's at his car and fumbling for his keys, and it's time to put that away because it's really not something he can sit on for long periods of time. He needs to go home right now, home to sleep. He needs to trust this once, like he has trouble doing sometimes, that everything won't combust to cinders while he sleeps.


End file.
